(Note: Christopher Bollyn is one of the greatest reporters in the
world. He is independent and intrepid. He is what Geraldo Rivera and Dan Rather
pretend to be. Bollyn reported on, and contributed to, our "Citizens for a Fair
Vote Count" Convention which was held at the Greater Cincinnati Airport in late
August, 2000. This article explains, as far as possible, the nuts and bolts of
how 99% of the counties in the USA incredibly delegate the "counting" of our
votes to a few private companies, who "count" the votes in secret. We at
votefraud.org believe that these few private companies now fix every key
election in collaboration with the 5 major TV Networks, the AP Wire Service, and
the Ruling Elite behind all these entities. This Ruling Elite also controls the
Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee -- which
entities look the other way and NEVER protest this absolutely un-American,
unconstitutional, and criminal arrangement.)

HOW A
PRIVATE COMPANY COUNTS OUR VOTES ON ELECTION NIGHT

By Christopher Bollyn
American Free Press

When the polls closed in
Chicago, American Free Press was at the Cook County clerk’s
office to see how the secretive private company that operates the voting
machines in America’s thirdlargest city actually controls the counting of the votes.

CHICAGO,
Illinois:
The morning after Election Day, the Democratic vice presidential candidate John
Edwards promised the nation that the Democrats would "make sure that every vote
counts, and that every vote is counted."

Later in
the day, as the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, conceded
defeat to George W. Bush, his 9th cousin and fellow “Bonesman”
from Yale’s elite secret society, The Order of
the Skull & Bones, he said: “In America, it is
vital that every vote count.”

Kerry and
Edwards, however, conceded defeat before some 170,000
to 250,000 provisional ballots from the state of Ohio, which could have
changed the outcome of the election, had been counted.

As the
public has been led to believe, the final tally came down to a near 50-50 split
and it was the “swing state”
of Ohio that made the difference.

But how
were the votes actually counted across the nation on November 2?

VOTING IN CHICAGO

On
Election Day, voters in Cook County (Ill.) were among the 60 million Americans
who voted with machines made by Election Systems & Software, a secretive and
private company based in Omaha.

ES&S, as
its known, calls itself “the world's largest and
most experienced provider of total election management solutions.”
According to the company’s own figures, 42
percent of all registered voters in the United States voted on ES&S equipment on
Election Day.

ES&S
sells its “end-to-end election management suite
of solutions” to replace traditional voting
methods -- and election officials
-- with what it calls “one-stop-shop”
full service election coordination from start to finish.

What this
means on Election Day is that ES&S, a private company, manages everything about
the voting, from voter registration, the printing of ballots, the programming of
the voting machines, the counting and tabulation of the votes, and the final
reporting of the results for 60 million Americans in 47 states.

Four
years after first revealing the flaws inherent in the insecure ES&S electronic
voting machines used in Cook
County, American Free Press went to the county clerk’s office to observe how ES&S controls the counting of the votes
for America’s
third largest city, Chicago, and the suburban area around it.

Scott
Burnham, spokesman for the county clerk, had informed me that the vote count is
open to the public and that press credentials would not be required. Shortly
after arriving, I ran into Burnham and David Orr, the county clerk, in the
hallway.

Although
I had arrived just shortly before the polls closed at 7 p.m., I was the only
member of the public or the press around except for a couple Associated Press
(AP) reporters in the far corner of the room. They were busy setting up their
laptop to the ES&S computer in the backroom, which provided them with
“direct feed” of
the results.

I was
surprised to see so few people attending such an important event. In France,
scores of citizens watch the vote count in each polling station.

While the
results were coming in, the AP “reporter”
read a novel while her laptop did the communicating.

When I
went to talk to the AP reporter, Burnham quickly appeared and told me to leave.
“You should talk to AP,”
he said.

“She
is AP,” I replied.

“She
just works for AP,” he said.

Clearly
the subject of AP having direct data feed from the mainframe computer was
something Burnham did not want me to discuss.

Any
actual counting of the votes by citizens is very rare in the United States
except for a few counties in Montana and other states where paper ballots are
still hand-counted. In most counties the ballots are treated as input data to
be processed through computer systems controlled by private companies like ES&S.

In Cook
County the ballot is inevitably a cluttered punch card with nearly 100 votes.
After voting for the president and vice-president, a senator, and a Congressman,
the voter has to wade through pages of choices to vote for some 80 local
officials from the sanitation board to the state’s
general assembly. Every voter had to vote on nearly 80 judges.

As I
voted, every ballot that was fed into the ES&S machine registered as an
“undervote,” as
did mine.

Rather
than holding separate elections for national and local officials, as is done in
most countries, the Cook County ballot is extremely long and complicated.
Officials who support electronic voting systems give the complexity of the
ballot as the main reason why voting machines are necessary
-- because it would take too much time to count
the votes manually.

After
calling and personally visiting ES&S headquarters in Omaha and Chicago, I can
say it is the most secretive company I have ever come across. In August, I
visited ES&S company headquarters on John Galt Blvd. in Omaha.

Although
the company says it is the largest voting machine company in the United States,
they were unable to provide any information about their company or their
products. The ownership of the company is a closely-guarded secret. I asked to
meet with Todd Urosevich, one of the two brothers that founded the company.

Bob and
Todd Urosevich started ES&S as a company called Data Mark in the early 1980s.
Today, Bob Urosevich heads Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, a competitor of
ES&S and the second largest U.S. manufacturer of electronic voting machines.

Together,
the computerized ballot scanners (ed: not to be confused with
barcode scanners as related to
mailing envelopes
and other facets of our daily lives) and touch-screen voting machines systems made
by ES&S and Diebold recorded some 80 percent of all votes cast in the recent
U.S. presidential election.

As ES&S
had no media relations person available and Todd Urosevich was not willing to be
interviewed, the company’s chief financial
officer Tom O’Brien finally appeared. O’Brien,
clearly displeased with my visit and questions, refused to provide any
information about the company.

Although
I was ill on Election Day, I knew I had to go to the county clerk’s
office to observe “counting”
of the vote. It is, after all, the only “counting”
open to the public. What I saw in Chicago, however, only made me more nauseous.

The only
“vote count” the
press or public can observe in Chicago is what is projected on screens. The
opening screen read: ES&S Automatic Election Returns, Release 35, Under License
to the City of Chicago, Serial No. 0004, Copyright 1987.

Carl
Zimmerman, technical supervisor for the clerk’s
office, said that the computer that ran the system was in the back,
“in the ES&S room,”
he said.

At 7
p.m., Jonathan Lin, a worker on the county clerk’s
computer staff, came out and turned on the monitors on the 6th floor,
where the City of Chicago votes were tallied and displayed. Behind him was Rick
Thurman, an ES&S technician, checking the first results.

Thurman
seemed surprised when I asked him if he worked for ES&S. He said that the
company had about 6 engineers running the computer in the back room. He then
checked himself, saying he had said too much.

Later I
asked Lin who was actually operating the computer that was generating the
results being shown on the monitors. “ES&S is
running the mainframe for all of this,” Lin said
pointing to the television displays.

In the
press room in the back I noticed stacks of boxes containing
“Votamatic”
voting machines and “pre-punched”
ballots printed by ES&S of Addison, Texas, for the different precincts in Cook
County. In the rear hallway behind the press room was the ES&S room. Only ES&S
personnel were allowed into the room.

When I
poked around in the hallway and peeked into the ES&S room an armed marshal and
ES&S employee quickly appeared. In no condition for a confrontation, I made
myself scarce.

I met a
couple reporters from CLTV, a local cable channel of WGN. One of the reporters
asked about my interest in the Chicago
tallies. I said I was interested to see how a private company runs the
elections in Chicago.

Seemingly
unaware of how ES&S operates elections in Cook County, I explained the basics.
“I’ve observed
elections across Europe,” I added,
“from France and Germany to Serbia and Holland. Everywhere in Europe
voting is done on paper ballots that are counted by the citizens
-- except Holland.”

Obviously
uncomfortable with this discussion the reporter responded,
“I’m glad I’m
not in Serbia. I don’t mind if a machine counts
the votes.”